And there’s some scholarship to back me up. According to a 2019 report by the American Psychological Association, two-thirds of Americans are under emotional strain because of the perpetual news cycle. Dr. Steven Stosny, a Washington, DC-based therapist, even coined the phrase “headline stress disorder.” The struggle, folks, is real.

But burying our heads in the sand isn’t the right answer either. With 2020 being an election year, there’s too much on the line for us to turn a blind eye. “Let’s Stop Fighting over Climate Change,” is the first installment of our new column by Patrick Carolan, director of Catholic outreach for Vote Common Good. Starting with this issue and through November, Patrick will tackle the most important issues facing conscientious voters—deconstructed through a Franciscan lens. We think you’ll like his writing.

It’s easy to lose heart at the state of our country and the world, but this quote from Pope Francis could bring us to a place of peace: “There is never a reason to lose hope. Jesus says: ‘I am with you until the end of the world.'”

Amen.

1. Baptism of Jesus. Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River illuminates not only Jesus’ identity as God’s beloved Son, but it also reveals with bright clarity his mission as Messiah—the anointed one—as well. When Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, he was anointed by his heavenly Father “with the Holy Spirit and with power” (Acts 10:38). When the evangelist John described the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus, he placed these words on the lips of the Baptist: “I saw the Spirit come down like a dove from the sky and remain upon him” (Jn 1:32). The word remain in this context emphasizes the permanence of this ongoing relationship of God’s Spirit with us as well.

2. The Wedding at Cana. Jesus caused quite a stir at Cana when he changed the water into wine. The Jerusalem Bible explains to us, in a footnote, why Jesus worked this and other signs. Jesus worked them to strengthen our faith in his divine mission. The evangelist writes that Jesus “let his glory be seen, and his disciples believed in him” (Jn 2:11b). At special times, such as at his Baptism, as well as in this “first sign” at Cana and at the Transfiguration, the divine glory shines through brightly. We get a glimpse of God’s light and saving presence breaking into our world. And when Mary tells Jesus, “They have no wine,” she seems to be causing something else—besides the changing of water into wine—to happen as well. She is very much like a mother bird nudging her fledgling to take that first flight from the nest.

3. Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom. If there is one central image that ties together the five Mysteries of Light, it is the Kingdom of God. A simple way to understand the Kingdom of God is to see it as God’s saving presence in our world. In each of the new mysteries—Jesus’ baptism, his sign at Cana, the proclamation of the Kingdom, the Transfiguration, and the Eucharist—we are witnessing examples of God’s saving love and presence breaking into our world. It’s helpful to recall, at the same time, that the name Jesus means “Yahweh saves.” Jesus’ saving presence among us, therefore, is the perfect embodiment of the Kingdom of God.

4. The Transfiguration of Jesus. To set the scene for this mystery, we see Jesus inviting Peter, James, and John to withdraw with him from the busy plane of everyday life and come to a high mountaintop. Pope John Paul II called the Transfiguration, “the mystery of light par excellence,” presumably because, during this exalted event, the glory of Jesus’ divine nature shown brilliantly through his humanity, totally transfiguring Jesus. As the Gospel of Matthew put it, [Jesus’] “face shown like the sun, and his clothes became white as light” (17:2). The event reminds us that Jesus is truly divine as well as truly human.

5. The First Eucharist. The final Luminous Mystery takes us to Jesus’ last supper, where he shares his very self with his disciples in the form of bread and wine. This holy meal unites us in love with God and with one another so that we become the one body of Christ. Jesus’ essential gesture at the Eucharist is his handing over his body and blood to the community gathered around him. After Jesus does this, he says, “Do this in memory of me.” He is not saying simply that we should repeat this liturgical ritual. He also wants us to repeat what he has done for the community during his life here on earth. He has, literally, handed himself over to them. We are being asked in our own day to hand over our bodies as well—in loving service to the Christian community.

Next Month: The Joyful Mysteries

The climate crisis conversation is more about intellectual arguments than about the profound spiritual and moral implications of our failure to care for God’s creation. Many years of advocacy by hardworking environmental groups have failed to produce even modest climate legislation in a dysfunctional US Congress.

In a November 2019 speech at the Vatican, Pope Francis called for adding to the Catechism “the sin against ecology, the ecological sin against the common home.” Commenting on this, Dr. Celia Deane-Drummond, director of the Laudato Si’ Research Institute (LSRI) at Oxford University, said, “Defining ecological sin in this way is a natural outcome of the idea of integral ecology, that is, the ontological basis for why everything is interconnected, which is grounded in a doctrine of creation.”

Justice for the Environment

This concept of integral ecology or interconnectedness is not new. Eight hundred years ago, St. Francis of Assisi looked at life through a lens of all creation. He had a relational connection from which blossomed a perspective of deep empathy. In his poetry, when Francis talked about Brother Sun and Sister Moon, it was not just flowery language; it was a belief in the connectedness of all creation, a wholeness of being. In her book A Franciscan View of Creation, Dr. Ilia Delio, OSF, talks about the link between creation and the Incarnation: “Francis’ respect for creation was not a duty or obligation but arose out of an inner love by which creation and the source of creation were intimately united.”

St. Francis, who understood this intimate unity, was not alone. St. Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th-century mystic and doctor of the Church, said: “The Spirit of the Lord fills the earth. This means that no creature, whether visible or invisible, lacks a spiritual life.” Her poetry describes how God is in all things, and all things are in God. Centuries before we discovered that the Earth and the universe are not a static creation, Hildegard understood the universe and Earth as one evolving being connected to all.

St. Bonaventure, a 13th-century Franciscan, described the created universe as the “fountain fullness of God’s expressed being.” In other words, as God is expressed in creation, creation in turn expresses the creator. Also in the 13th century, Dominican theologian Meister Eckhart said, “Every creature is a word of God and a book about God.”

Returning to the Garden

Even though we have become aware through science that some of our sacred stories cannot be taken literally, it doesn’t make their spiritual message less relevant. We should not think about the creation story as a static event, where two people disobeyed God by eating an apple. Instead, we should apply the creation story to our current reality, where we as a people choose to separate ourselves from the creator by consciously leaving the Garden.

Perhaps instead of thinking of the story as a single event that happened thousands of years ago, for which God has continuously punished us, contemplate this theory: We are in a continuum where every day each of us—individuals and society as a whole—makes a conscious decision to leave the Garden. Maybe this is the “ecological sin” that Pope Francis talks about. In 2014, speaking in Latin America, the pope said, “An economic system centered on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it.”

We are waiting for Jesus to come again and open the Garden. Yet, in Matthew 28:20, Jesus says, “Behold, I am with you always.” The question we should be asking is not when will Jesus return, but when will we return to the Garden?

This year marks the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical “Laudato Si.'” In it, he says that “many things have to change course, but it is we human beings above all who need to change.” Francis is talking about a change of both attitude and action. We need to stop living in a world where we are all separate and come together in a world of interbeing, a world where we are part of God’s creation, not separate from creation.

It’s Time for Action

Our everyday choices may seem simplistic or even irrelevant. But St. Bonaventure tells us that how we choose and what we choose make a difference—first, in what we become by our choices, and second, in what the world becomes by our choices.

Faith organizations such as Franciscan Action Network, Greenfaith, and others have jointly created a project called “Living the Change: Faithful Choices for a Flourishing World” The project is based on the concept that Earth is sacred, and that each of us individually and all of us collectively are responsible for our sacred Earth. Every choice we make—whether it’s what we eat, the energy we use, how we travel, or any other choices—should be made as if we have come home to the Garden.

As Gandhi said, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” Simple changes such as eating a more plant-based diet, choosing renewable energy over fossil fuels, and walking or riding a bike instead of using a car can make a difference. This is even more effective if we make these changes a vital part of our spiritual practice.

If we are prayerful and intentional in our actions—understanding, as St. Hildegard taught us, that “God is life; God lives in all created things”—then we will be taking a step toward returning to the Garden.

“A little bit of light pushes away a lot of darkness.”
—Jewish proverb

In a Nazi-orchestrated raid on November 9, 1938, paramilitary forces and nationalists destroyed more than 7,000 Jewish-owned businesses and some 267 synagogues throughout Germany and Austria. Kristallnacht, or “The Night of Broken Glass,” was more than just the handiwork of violent anarchists. The central message intended for European Jews was simple and direct: You are no longer welcome here. Less than a year later, World War II would begin. Six million Jews would lose their lives in the death camps before their liberation in 1944 and 1945.

While our minds may immediately go to Nazi Germany as the birthplace of modern anti-Semitism, that brand of hatred took root in the United States long before the advent of World War II. In the 17th century, when the island of Manhattan was a Dutch colony, the director general at the time called Jewish immigrants “repugnant, hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ.” His name isn’t worth repeating here; better he should stay a forgotten footnote in history.

Anti-Semitism only grew from there. During the Civil War, when slavery divided our nation, many on both sides of the conflict inexplicably agreed on the negative influence of Jewish Americans on 19th-century life. Major General Ulysses S. Grant, himself an anti-Semite, likened Jews to shiftless vagabonds and called them “intolerable nuisances.”

Sadly, such bigotry has taken root in this century as well.

Rise in Violence

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization that started after the wrongful conviction of Jewish American businessman Leo Frank in 1913—and his lynching two years later—tracks hate crimes here and abroad. While some of the ADL’s policies and positions have been controversial in the past, as a watchdog group, their advocacy on behalf of Jewish people is unmatched. The ADL tracked a noticeable spike in anti-Semitic activity with 2017’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where many participants chanted “Jews will not replace us!” while flashing the Nazi salute.

Time could not remedy the anti-Jewish sentiment after the rally ended. In the first month of 2020, the ADL cited over 50 anti-Semitic incidents. These included synagogues in Seattle, Washington; Springfield, Virginia; and Washington, DC, which received the same letter denouncing Jews as members of the “Synagogue of Satan.”

The swastika, once a symbol of good luck until it was hijacked by the Nazi Party in 1920, has become more visible in recent years. In January alone, the city hall in Pendleton, Oregon, was befouled with the symbol. In that same month, universities in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New York, Montana, and West Virginia were vandalized with swastikas and cries for violence against Jewish people, the ADL reports.

Most startling is that much of the anti-Jewish activity (read: domestic terrorism) of late can be traced back to pseudo-Christian groups such as the White Aryan Resistance, the Ku Klux Klan, and Westboro Baptist Church, all of whom espouse an anti-Christian message in the name of Christ. Real Christians should weep at the irony.

Learn, Seek, Pray

April seems the perfect time to address this growing divide. Passover begins this month, celebrating the Hebrews’ liberation from slavery in Egypt. But clearly the damaged members of our Christian family are the ones in need of deliverance. And though it is a small minority who commit acts of violence against those outside our faith, we should search our own hearts for residues of hatred and intolerance. To do that, let us . . .

Learn about the Jewish religion and its followers. A good resource is My Jewish Learning (MyJewishLearning.com), a site that provides history, weekly Torah readings, and blogs about the blessings and challenges of the Jewish faith.

Seek connection and reconciliation. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops offers a range of useful resources on Catholic-Jewish relations, our shared history, and ways to fortify the bridge between us. Go to usccb.org to get started.

Pray for peace in our minds and hearts. Looking inward before we move outward is a good first step. We should ask ourselves what prejudices prevent us from truly living the Gospel message—a message that is disregarded when we allow our lower selves to take over.

We cannot rewrite history—though it is our duty to learn from it. And there is a legacy for us to fall back on. On June 12, 1941, in an address to the Allied delegates, Prime Minister Winston Churchill had this to say of Adolf Hitler and the evil his party was spreading like a virus: “We cannot see how deliverance will come or when it will come, but nothing is more certain than that every trace of Hitler’s footsteps, every stain of his infected, corroding fingers will be sponged and purged and, if need be, blasted from the surface of the earth.”

May that legacy of hatred suffer the same fate.

This month, parishes across the country will light their paschal candles before the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. Chances are, some of them were made by this self-taught candlemaker.

If you are looking for Martin Marklin, you will likely find him in one of two places—either tending to the 100-150 beehives on his farm in New Hampshire or handcrafting candles made from the fruits of those bees’ labor. That is because, for Martin, the two are spiritually connected.

Martin is the founder and owner of Marklin Candle Design (MarklinCandle.com), which makes liturgical candles for churches throughout the world. The company has also made candles for four papal visits—two by St. John Paul II and one each for Popes Benedict XVI and Francis—and has expanded into making liturgical furnishings. The present company is a far cry, though, from the small operation Martin started in his parents’ basement in the mid-’80s.

Humble Roots

Martin, who grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, was named after Monsignor Martin Hellriegel, pastor of Holy Cross Church, the Marklin family’s parish. The priest was a forerunner to the Catholic Liturgical Movement in the United States prior to Vatican II, so Martin says the parish “was a hotbed of liturgical renewal.”

As an altar server, Martin says he became fascinated with the liturgical candles he saw in the church. He recalls that every year, a couple in the parish would hand-decorate the paschal candle—carving out intricate and beautiful designs and filling them with melted colored wax. Martin says he remembers observing these candles and being mystified by how this technique was accomplished.

At the age of 13, Martin went off to the seminary in Hays, Kansas, to become a Capuchin Franciscan. When he returned home for Easter, he saw a less-than-beautiful paschal candle standing in the church. When he asked why, he was told that the couple who always provided the beautiful candles were no longer doing it, and no one else knew how.

Martin says he told Sister Mary Grace, “You get me a plain candle when I come home for Christmas, and I’ll decorate the candle and try to replicate the process.” And that’s exactly what he did—in his parents’ kitchen.

The kitchen, he says, “was a mess. It took my mom years to forgive me for all the melted colored wax I had on her stove.” From that moment on, Martin continued to refine his skills, and he developed a technique where he could make the candles proficiently and artistically. After he “built a workbench, got a couple beakers and a hot pot,” he moved production of his candles into his parents’ basement in 1985.

Marklin Candles Is Born

In the first year of his candlemaking business, Martin sold only six candles. He would go door-to-door trying to make sales. By the time his company’s third anniversary rolled around, he was up to 35 candles. Sales continued to grow steadily each year, going from 75 candles in the fourth year to 150 in his fifth year of business.

He started attending trade shows and tapped into the liturgical renewal in the United States. His numbers kept growing. Eventually, he moved his one-man business to New Hampshire where, in 1989, he met his future wife, Christine. She was teaching at the time, but it wouldn’t be long before she joined Martin in the candlemaking business.

Christine says watching Martin decorate the candles was always fascinating; that’s how she eventually picked up the skill. In fact, she decorated her first candle when Martin left the room to take a phone call.

“I sat down and finished it. He came back and said, ‘Wait a minute, I didn’t finish this one.’ I learned how to decorate the candles basically from spending a lot of time watching him. Then I eventually started helping decorate,” she says.

Christine left teaching and joined Martin in working full-time on the business, which has proven invaluable. In addition to their candle business, the Marklins also have a retail store, make church furniture, and manage 14 acres of land, which is home to an array of animals.

The couple have four children—Matthias, Judith, Simeon, and Anna—ranging in age from 20 to 26, who have all helped with the business at some time or another. But Christine is clear that while she and Martin love working with their kids, they are not “putting any pressure on them to come take over the family business.”

The Marklins have 15‚ 20 employees who help with many aspects of the business, but Christine points out that they still “have more than enough to keep us busy.”

But being busy didn’t stop Martin from taking on one more thing.

A Life-Changing Discovery

Marklin Candles are made using 51 percent beeswax, which equates to the company using about 30,000 pounds of beeswax a year. As Martin says in a video on the company’s website, that means “1.5 billion bees are working in the world for Marklin Candle.” Yet it wasn’t until about 11 years ago that Martin realized just how little he knew about how the wax he was using was created.

“How did these bees make wax, which was the source of our livelihood for all these years?” Martin asked himself. “I would be embarrassed if someone asked me about that.”

At that very time, a priest friend who was a beekeeper told Martin he should get into it. Martin took up the hobby, deciding it was “a good time for a midlife crisis,” he says with a laugh. The hobby, however, has been life-changing for him. “This one singular creature has transformed how I choose to live my life, how I try to operate our business. It really has pervaded many aspects of my life—in virtue of the facts of sustainability, stewardship of creation, living in community, and social justice,” says Martin.

The phrase be the bee, Martin says, is a good directive for us all to follow. The honeybee, he says, has much to teach us about community and serving others.

“When you think of a bee as a forager, what does it do? It seeks in the world that which is fragrant, colorful, beautiful, and she visits those flowers and ingests the nectar, adds some enzymes to it, and makes honey. And the analogy is that we similarly should be like the bee. We should be in the world, seeking out that which is beautiful, noble, true; and we should be, in our own lives, transforming it. But not for our own personal enrichment, because everything about a bee is for the society. The honeybee is a social creature and cannot live by itself.”

A Work of Faith and Art

That sense of community is something that Martin has instilled in his business too. Marklin Candle Design’s tagline is “The Mark of Human Hands,” which Martin says the company takes very seriously. “Of the seven companies in the United States that make candles for churches, we believe we’re the only ones who make the candles entirely by hand—hand-molded, hand-dipped, and hand-decorated. Every candle that goes from our door always has multiple hands that touch it along the way. That’s not only important but significant, particularly in light of the fact that these candles are going to be used in a liturgical service.”

The company also makes candles to mark births, deaths, and Baptisms, as well as other significant life events. Because of the personal nature of many of these products, Christine says workers end up working directly with the customer. In doing so, workers often get the story behind the candle, she says. Sometimes those stories are delightful, but other times they are heartbreaking. Oftentimes, she says, she ends up saying a prayer for the person or the family, “so it does really become a ministry.”

Paschal candles are also a mainstay of the company’s workload. The paschal candle is lit every year before the Easter Vigil and remains lit in the sanctuary of the church until Pentecost. It is a symbol of the light of Christ.

Usually, Martin says, paschal candles are decorated with the following elements: a cross, the alpha and the omega, the date, and five wax nails. Over time, though, he says the Church has provided artists with a bit more license regarding the design of the candles, which he sees as a bit of “a return to the days when the Church was a patron of the artist and would commission works of art.”

Martin says the words of the US bishops’ document “Built of Living Stones” form his thinking about how his company goes about creating their candles. The document notes, “Quality is evident in the honesty and genuineness of the materials that are used, the nobility of the form embodied in them, the love and care that goes into the creation of a work of art, and the personal stamp of the artist whose special gift produces a harmonious whole, a well-crafted work.”

Go Light Your Candle

Martin says candles play an important role in all of our lives, not just his. For instance, he asks, “When do we light candles?” and then runs down a list of the many ways we use candles—birthdays, deaths, peace marches, candlelight dinners, roadside memorials, even the Olympic flame.

“We have this very strong relationship between candles and light and flame and significant moments in our life,” he says. “Put that in the context of our faith, and that candle takes on a new significance. I can have my candle and light your candle and a multitude of candles, but the candle doesn’t lose any of its luminosity.”

Scholars have referred to Mark’s Gospel as a passion narrative with a few introductory texts. But more to the point, it is better described as a primer on conversion.

Once upon a time there was a king who heard the message of an itinerant holy man and was struck to the heart. Immediately the king gave up his throne, his power and possessions, and begged to become the man’s disciple. The master said the king would find it extremely hard to be a worthy disciple, because of his former position and because he must undergo a harsh apprenticeship, obeying the master without question.

The king pledged his obedience and life to the master. He was assigned to collect and empty the slop buckets, humiliating for a former king. But he performed his task diligently.

Weeks went by, and the other disciples grew uncomfortable with the way the master was ignoring the new disciple. They came to him saying: “Is the king ready yet to be one of us?” Finally, the master sent his number-one disciple to test the king’s readiness. The master told the head disciple to spill the contents of the slop buckets over the floor the king had just washed. He was to watch the king-disciple’s reaction and report back.

When the buckets were dumped, the king was livid. He turned on the disciple in rage, telling him that he was lucky. If the king were still the king, he’d have had him severely punished for his actions. When the disciple reported this, the master shook his head saying, “As I thought, he’s not ready yet.”

When the former king was tested next, he held his tongue, but his face grew red and his eyes glared. The third time, the king controlled his words and his face, but looked rigidly at the floor, struggling. When this was reported, the master knew the king was getting close.

More weeks went by, and the disciples were feeling that the master was being far too hard on someone who had once been king and yet had done so much to change. The head disciple asked to test the king again. “Please,” he said, “I think this time he will be ready.” The head disciple was given permission. This time the king-disciple did not react with anger, but merely looked the head disciple in the eye with gentleness and bowed before him. Then the king-disciple began to clean up the floor.

But the head disciple wanted to make sure. And so as the former king bent over his task, the head disciple kicked the bucket a second time. Again, the king-disciple straightened up, bowed low and went about his work. Elated, the head disciple ran to his master and excitedly told him that, yes, the king was ready to join the other disciples.

The master listened and said, “You are right. The king is now ready. He has become a disciple.”

As the head disciple turned to leave, his master’s words brought him up short. “Wait! When you go to tell him and bring him here, you must take his place.” The disciple was stunned and asked why. “Because you did not obey me. You tested him as I instructed you and then you did something on your own that was not necessary. It is time you learned obedience once again, and he will take your place as my head disciple.”

The man obeyed, chastened, seething with bitterness and confusion. The king had become a true disciple, ready to begin his new life, but the other was just beginning to learn what it means to listen, to obey, to follow the master and to know what being a true disciple might entail.

Is the king ready yet? Are we?

Discipleship Continually Refashions Us

This story is a paradigm for Mark’s Gospel. We are called again and again to learn—often the hard way—what following in the footsteps of the crucified and risen beloved Son of God might mean.

Just when we think we know, there is something to face that we never expected and did not take into account. There is the call to discipleship and to catch people in the net of the Kingdom; the call to deny one’s very self and take up the cross that is laid on us by our sharing the truth and sufferings on behalf of justice; and there is the call to community in the Resurrection.

It never ends. It is a circle that comes back around, spiraling in and down as it reforms and refashions us in the image of the beloved Child of God.

“The gospel of Jesus Christ [the Son of God]” (Mark 1:1—all quotes are New American Bible unless indicated otherwise). This is the way the first Gospel begins: blunt, abrupt, as though it were an interruption to history, to thought patterns and to all of life. And then immediately it jumps backward in time to the Prophet Isaiah and forward to John the Baptizer and to the “one mightier than I,” who “will baptize you with the holy Spirit” (Mark 1:7-8).

This is a tradition of prophetic discipleship. Before the first chapter is complete, Jesus will have continued in this vein and called his own to come after him, patterning their lives—and our own—on his way. We begin immediately with the first call to discipleship in the Gospel: the call to “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men” (1:17)—the call to catch men and women for the Kingdom of God. And Peter, along with Andrew, James and John, turns Jesus’ way and goes off in his company.

The journey to Jerusalem, the place of reckoning for all prophets, begins with this first step, the initial call to discipleship. And for the next seven chapters Jesus will gather more into his company and teach them in word, parable, healings, associations with the poor, the outcast, the leper and the sinner, and by feeding them with bread, insight and hope.

There are only 16 chapters in Mark, and there is an immediacy that is relentless, building in intensity and demanding our response. We come along with them, wrestling with the words and presence of God in Jesus, seeking to know the truth of who this man really is who calls us out. In the words of Simone Weil in Waiting for God, it is hard to sift through our lives to the actual truth of the person of Jesus.

In the past, scholars have referred to Mark’s Gospel as a passion narrative with a few introductory texts. But more to the point, it is better described as a primer on conversion, a summons to discipleship. This discipleship is fathoms deep—with each call drawing us further and further into waters that are mysterious, fearful and wondrous.

Question of Jesus’ Identity Central

Eugene La Verdiere’s two-volume commentary on Mark (Liturgical Press) divides the text in half: Chapters 1 through 7 and Chapters 8 through 16. The turning point is Jesus’ probing question, “Who do people say that I am?” (Mark 8:27), after he has fed the 4,000 and warned his disciples about the leaven of the Pharisees.

When Peter seems to know the answer and is quick to respond with “You are the Messiah!” (Mark 8:29), he is ordered not to repeat that to anyone. Peter has his own ideas on who Jesus is and who he wants Jesus to be. In reality, Jesus will not fulfill any of Peter’s hopes. Instead, Peter will have to learn through the hard experience of failure, dismay and betrayal that this man is far beyond anything he imagined.

To the Jews, messiah often meant a political or nationalistic savior who would put the Jewish nation back on the map and free them from their oppressors. That concept not only limited who Jesus might be, but also emphasized aspects of liberation and freedom that were not helpful in coming to know Jesus’ true identity.

The fledging disciple, Peter, is ordered brusquely not to spread this erroneous idea. And Peter is caught up sharply and confused, as all of us must eventually learn in our singular and often skewed relationship to Jesus.

And then Jesus presents the heart of his message: the first teaching on how “the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days” (Mark 8:31). Peter vigorously argues with Jesus, resisting this teaching with every fiber of his body and soul.

This confrontation is incisive, splitting the two halves of the Gospel into who readers might have thought this man was and who he believes himself to be, insisting that we look squarely at the truth and not be mired in our own wants and intentions.

Peter begins to reject and resist at this midpoint. By the time he vehemently denies Jesus three times in Chapter 14 (verses 66-72), we shouldn’t be so taken off guard, wondering how he could have done that—he’d begun to fashion his own way of being Jesus’ disciple long before he was questioned in the high priest’s courtyard by a serving girl and a stranger.

The Demands of the Cross

Peter stumbles over the second call to discipleship: the summons to the cross, which is the stumbling block for all disciples.

Jesus said to the crowd with his disciples: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what does it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father and the holy angels” (Mark 8:34-38, New Revised Standard Version).

This chapter and Jesus’ words act as a hinge between the halves of Mark’s Gospel, a door that can either open to the possibility, fraught with the danger and demands of the cross, or close off the mysterious grace-filled way of Jesus’ revelation of himself as the beloved child and suffering servant of his Father. That revelation began at his baptism in the opening chapter.

Each step of the way opens to awareness and vulnerability, yet also presents a temptation to remake Jesus and his message and meaning into our own design that suits our own ends. It is far easier to ignore the Gospel’s hard words and warnings that Jesus consistently shares with disciple-friends who are afraid at what he might be saying, especially his suggesting that they might have to suffer and share death with him.

Call to Be Different

In Mark’s last eight chapters we hear Jesus’ teaching on how his disciples should act among themselves and how they are to differ radically from other groups in their society and culture. They are to guard against ambition and envy of anyone’s position of power, always living as servants, intent on one another’s needs, especially attentive to those in most misery or need. Jesus’ disciples are to shun riches as a danger and instead give what they have to the poor, laying up “treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” (Mark 10:21b).

They are reminded three times of the cross that looms before them, their own blindness and pettiness that cause dissension among them. Again disciples are to be characterized by being servants. “Whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:43-45).

True discipleship is imaged in unlikely people: children, those without any power in society, the poor, those who struggle to live with dignity, Peter’s mother-in-law who immediately rises from her sickbed to wait on Jesus, a woman who reaches out to touch just the hem of his garment, a widow who gives a copper coin not worth a cent but gives out of her sustenance all she has to live on. All these people image Jesus, who will give his very life.

And there is a foreigner, a Syrophoenician woman who humbles herself before Jesus, begging on behalf of her daughter, surprising Jesus with her quick repartee and at the same time suggesting that he may belong to others besides the sheep of the house of Israel—perhaps he belongs to anyone in need, who is humble enough to acknowledge who he is as the beloved of God.

Another woman anoints him, publicly and ritually, with oil poured upon his head in the tradition of the priest, prophet and king. She will be remembered for her action, her alliance with him, her witness to his presence and power.

The 12 disciples who accompany Jesus keep missing the other disciples whom Jesus keeps pointing out and praising as those who believe, those who know him and those who are truly already “in his company.”

The Resurrection Challenge

The third and last call to discipleship is in the last chapter on the resurrection. After the terrible reality of Jesus’ rejection, brutalization and crucifixion, and the burial, there is only an empty tomb and the message that the disciples are to return to Galilee. There they will see him. After hearing this, the three women “fled from the tomb, seized with trembling and bewilderment. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (Mark 16:8).

Many people think this is the original ending of Mark. It falls like a stone, sinking into the sea. Is that all there is?

But that is the beauty and the ingeniousness of the text. In their fear, the three women do go to the other disciples (all those in the city for the feast, all those who traveled in his company from Galilee, and the disciples—perhaps 30-70 people).

And they go home to Galilee, a journey of 90 miles, traveling together for a week or more. We can imagine them, walking and talking their way through their bewilderment and fear. They probably share the stories and the memories of their master, their teacher, healer, companion who fed them, warned them and suffered so terribly yet strangely. They marvel that somehow he could be still alive and waiting for them.

This is the call to discipleship in the Resurrection: to walk in community, sharing the gospel with the other disciples, walking and talking through our fear and looking for him out in the world.

The disciples return to Galilee, and when we return to the beginning of the Gospel, we find that in that first chapter (perhaps we missed it before) after Jesus’ baptism, “After John had been arrested. Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God: ‘This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel’” (Mark 1:14-15).

He appeared in Galilee and we, like the disciples, are to make our way through the Gospel again and again, in light of the cross and the resurrection. We catch what we missed before: that this Jesus is in the tradition of Isaiah, the suffering servant, John beheaded and Jesus crucified, and that we too must walk in that way, picking up our cross and coming after him, part of his company of friends, learning and relearning what it means to follow Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, the Son of God made flesh among us.

In the Beloved Son’s Company

We go around again in the paschal year’s mystery, in the Gospel readings, in our lives and times, in history and the sacramental rituals, sharing our knowledge and growing in the mystery of discipleship and wisdom of being in this beloved Son of God’s company. Company here means those who break bread together—the bread of the Scriptures, the bread of the Eucharist and our bread, our money and our resources shared among those in greatest need.

Mark’s Gospel is so densely packed, so rich in layers and unfathomable except in community. Historically, it is more than 30 years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Some scholars think it is a struggling community being pressured by the Jewish community to fight with them against the Romans to protect the Temple in Jerusalem.

And Mark writes to exhort his small band of followers to remember the Temple is now the Body of Christ, the Way of the Cross is the way of nonviolent resistance to evil, and No! they are not to fight the Romans. Instead, they are to pick up their cross and walk in the way of service, never killing in the name of the Father or his beloved Son.

And yes, this is our calling, our summons and our saving grace in this year of Mark’s Good News.

Why would this God of ours summon us to be disciples of his beloved Son? In the words of a Sufi master: “I chose to call you because you need it more than the others!”

Mark’s Gospel calls us, as community and Church who need it more than others, and who are so reluctant and slow to put out into the deep of discipleship. Once again in this year we tread the circle of the Good News of God in the world, circling home through the heart of this beloved Son, home with all the Father’s children. As we go we learn a new step or two in the Spirit’s way of dancing home, around and around and around. Amen.